I have been in many organizations and seen a diversity of cultures. In several, I have observed environments where the fear of failure has stymied innovation. Having a healthy attitude toward failure is important to avoid fool-hardiness; however, if failure becomes the focal point of management, success becomes defined as the absence of failure. I refer to this construct as “structural indifference.”
So you may ask, “why is structural indifference so bad?” Assume you are in an organization exhibiting structural indifference. Imagine a risky, high-profile project comes up – would you volunteer? Imagine you are given a very doable task, but the time frame is such that to be successful, you will have to take shortcuts, completing the task in a less-than-optimal way and not making the outcome reusable for other functions. Do you:
- Deliver the less optimal way or
- Take the chance of being late and doing it the best way?
In an environment of structural indifference, leadership has built structures that cause indifference toward success and innovation and hedge toward preservation and anonymity.
Structural indifference is dangerous. First, decisions become more difficult and require high-level executives. You will hear people say, “We need to get VP Smith’s approval on this.” If you make a decision and something adverse happens, the initiative is met with swift scorn. Because of this threat, decisions are escalated up the ladder to VP Smith.
Second, the behavioral response to a problem is irrational. When problems occur, the first concern is who to blame versus what actually happened. Following the blame-storming session, the leader will often issue extreme edicts to “prevent this from ever happening again.” These edicts exacerbate the issue by causing more exceptions to be approved by the leader. This spiral usually leads to more edicts, more exceptions, and so on.
Finally, those who play the game by doing nothing have little to no failure and are rewarded highly. This situation will annoy innovators, and the true high performers will soon depart. The caretakers that remain will react to what is required but little more. The boat will continue to float but never move faster.
How can you reverse structural indifference? It is not an easy proposition. You must break down the structures that encourage this indifference.
- Overt power-sharing: Leaders must ensure decision-making power is shared with lower levels of the organization and support those decisions.
- Right-size responses to problems: stop the edicts. Stop the attempts to save face by immediately prescribing blame and ask about intent before assuming it.
- Don’t assume leaders have leadership skills: Many of the executives I encounter need an executive coach and, frankly, a watchful eye. Inspection is important. If the only story you hear is the “Blame-Stormer’s,” you will overestimate their leadership ability. If you have a leader who prescribes praise to their people during success and stands up for the blame when things go wrong – you have a winner.
Structural indifference is a tough cycle to break. At its core is trust and confidence in leadership. Building trust and confidence take time. Start the change today.
Until next time.
Dr. Dave